Ace: aceofspadeshq at gee mail.com
Buck: buck.throckmorton at protonmail.com
CBD: cbd at cutjibnewsletter.com
joe mannix: mannix2024 at proton.me
MisHum: petmorons at gee mail.com
J.J. Sefton: sefton at cutjibnewsletter.com
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info: maildrop62 at proton dot me
Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. It is that time of the year, a spin of the Wheel of Hobbies (TM) naturally came up with Easter as a theme for this Hobby Thread.
As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. All (legal) hobbying is welcome. I understand that some people pay attention to military hardware, tactics and strategy as a hobby. Discussion of current military events permitted but must be made in the form of hobby commentary. Pants are optional. As always, puns are welcome and encouraged.
Play nice and do not be rude. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls.
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Didn't we do an Easter themed Hobby Thread last year at this time? Yes, yes we did. It was fun. Anyway...
Easter bunnies, baskets, eggs, chicks, etc. So many crafting possibilities. Let's talk about all of them. Any Easter projects this year? Any favorites from years past? Are you wise in the ways of Peter Cottontail?
Going to need help from the gray boxes on this one. Dinos did not have a prominent role in most scriptural accounts of the resurrection story (kind of like the nativity story). Must have gotten lost in the translations along the way. We're also a little clumsy at times which makes for perilous times if you are a bunny or a chick. A dino has to know its limits.
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Making a wood Easter bunny on a lathe:
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Turning Celtic eggs on a lathe:
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Cadbury chocolate factory:
Peeps!
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German bunny pyramid:
Get Germanized! German Easter traditions:
Rick Steves with European Easter egg traditions. Some interesting egg dying and decorating techniques here:
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We'll do an origami theme at some point, but couldn't resist including here:
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Simple and adorable:
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Does anyone raise chickens and hatch chicks for a hobby? I had wondered about doing a chicken theme but thought it might be too narrow.
This is fancy chicken coop build.
This is chick hatching on a large scale. Not a hobby, but hobbyists might be customers.
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This guy keeps outdoing himself. Great project and result. Even more impressive to make it out of pallet wood. Pallets are the wooden version of legos. With a little creativity and labor, they can be made into almost anything.
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Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did a singing theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.
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Notable comments from last week:
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Words of wisdom:
"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).
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Caution - not all rabbits are peaceful. Proceed accordingly. If you have trouble finding something in the content or comments that resonates with you, contribute your own. Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Do mighty things.
Tutti Fruitti 4/08 to 4/3/26. Best beloved cat ever. Miss you forever.
Nan in AZ
Tutti Fruitti was a beautiful cat with personality! So sorry that you have lost her.
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Hi,
I’ve been a long time reader, mostly lurking. I sent in a picture of Huey a while back that got posted here.
I adopted him from a shelter 13 years ago and he has gotten me through a lot of dark times. I lost him to cancer yesterday. He was the most gentle and sensitive soul. He didn’t chase squirrels and rarely barked. I never needed a leash with him, he always stayed by my side. Everyone who met him fell in love with him.
His loss hurts like no other.
Goodbye my good boy.
TCinNC
So sorry that you lost your wonderful Huey this week. He looks just like you describe him. Keep in touch.
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This is Yuki, my sweet American Eskimo dog. She was nearly 15, but I had to let her go this past Tuesday. Her heart was strong, but her body just gave out. I didn’t want to do it, but now she’s out of pain. I only wish I believed there was something beyond this life so I could see her again. My heart is broken.
Christopher (MP4)
It is so hard when you have to let a sweetheart like Yuki go. Keep in touch and keep your memories of her alive.
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PetMoron Adjacent Animals
Encountered by Members of The Horde
A Friend of the Blog has been traveling and stayed overnight where this sweet dog, Maple, resides. She just looks like a "Maple", doesn't she? She's a Golden Cavalier.
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Thank you for sharing your pets and animal photos and stories with us today.
If you would like to send pet and/or animal stories, links, etc. for the Ace of Spades Pet Thread, the address is:
petmorons at protonmail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known when you comment at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
Well, Spring is definitely in the air! I managed to get a photo of something rarely seen in the wild--two FedEx trucks mating.
Number of offspring varies, but delivery sometimes happens later that same day.
Thanks for the weekend threads!
BeckoningChasm
I have never observed this in the wild! Thanks!
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Adventure
Cherry Blossoms
Hi
I finally made the walk to Kenwood. This was the first time I was able to do a walk of that length since well before my hip surgery but I had a goal. Was determined to get there. And it was just in time. Blossoms had mostly gone white already and when the wind blew it was raining blossoms.
The little yellow flowers were literally a carpet on the forest floor. The other pictures are mostly Kenwood where the trees are just ancient and have shapes out of a fantasy novel.
The last picture, I think it's a redbud? Looks like the flowers are growing right out of the branch.
Hope you enjoy these as much as I did taking them.
Sharon(willow's apprentice)
Glad you were able to visit Kenwood and take those lovely photos to share with us!
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Gardens of The Horde
The Tree!
Hi KT! Hope you're doing well.
I've been absent from Saturday postings for awhile, but I wanted to share this photo of our red bud tree. Back in 2021, our first spring at the new house, I got one of those free tree packs from the Arbor Day Foundation. Since all we had was bare clay around the place (we built in a field) I had to put them all in pots. Eventually, they made it into 10" pots.
We got the red bud into the ground in early summer of 2024, and it's budding now. So cool! Two hawthornes and two crapemyrtles survived as of last year, still in pots. My Darwinian torture chamber of procrastination and neglect produces hardy survivors.
I'll try to get a photo of the whole tree later on, when it starts to get leaves. Publius said it's a nice-looking tree, and he rarely gives unsolicited commentary on the plantings around here.
He likes the hostas, too. Their little horns are sticking up.
My current project consists of digging up wild onions, which are EV.REE.WHERE.
Miley
Thanks for the great photo, information and garden update. I see a few Redbud blossoms sneaking out on that three last week . . .
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Hope everyone has a nice weekend.
If you would like to send photos, stories, links, etc. for the Saturday Gardening Thread, the address is:
ktinthegarden at g mail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
Hope everyone is having a nice Holy Saturday or Passover commemoration. Have you been paying attention to the Artemis Mission? Here's a live tracker. The world is still turning.
We didn’t choose to police the world—we earned the burden by pretending we didn’t have to. In a borderless, asymmetric world, refusing to act early doesn’t prevent conflict—it guarantees a bigger one.
People wonder why America is filling the role of global police when Trump promised no more new or “forever wars.”
I think there is a simple reason—and it is one I have personally experienced over a business career that included frequent international travel, extended assignments abroad, and even a few years living overseas.
9/11 changed more than just America; it changed our relationship with the rest of the world and how American citizens moved through it. Personally, I went from believing I had a kind of protective aura because I was an American to understanding I was a target. As terrorists grew emboldened, it became clear that if I were detained or kidnapped, there was no guarantee American assets would be coming to retrieve me. Holding an American passport was no longer a guarantee.
When I landed in Dubai in 2002 on an American Airlines flight, I remember thinking that being an American on an American airline, flying over Middle Eastern terrain within MANPAD range in a plane with a big American flag on the tail, might not have been the best idea.
It also awakened me to the reality that as America pushed globalization, we failed to recognize that globalization works in reverse—importing cultures and people not aligned with American principles and values. That realization only deepened when former President Obama worked to diminish American standing and leadership in an effort to make us just one nation among many. He and his allies believed that being a superpower drew too much attention, and that if we were simply another country—like those in Europe—there would be less threat to America and Americans.
Ludicrous. When America appears weak, as it did during the Carter, Obama and then the Biden administrations, the threat does not recede—it grows.
The truth is that America has always been more than “Team America: World Police.” It has been the world’s sin eater.
In historical lore, a sin eater is someone who takes on the sins of another through a ritual act, absolving them and allowing them peace. America has often played that role—absorbing the consequences of global disorder and, in the process, preventing humanity from being permanently stained by the worst evils men inflict on one another. At times, this “sin eating” has not only preserved peace but advanced the broader cause of civilization.
There is a simple rule about problems: they rarely improve when ignored. More often, they grow—and once they metastasize, they become far more difficult to resolve quietly.
That is why I find the assertion that Iran “presented no imminent threat” to America so unconvincing. . .
Read the whole thing, if you have time. I have seen arguments from the Woke Right that if the Ayatollahs really intended to destroy "all Jews", "all Infidels", etc. they would have already murdered members of minority religions in their own population (rather than murdering protesters?)
It was a busy week! The Democrats conducted one of their periodic “no kings” self-owns, while the Noem family experienced an unexpected bump in the road. April Fools Day came and went, and Tiger Woods’ vehicle once again let him down. The conflict in Iran continued, but memesters didn’t seem to notice. The Supreme Court heard a big birthright citizenship case, and if some of this week’s memes puzzle you, google “KitKat.”
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Music
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Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.
Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few house keeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in De Pere.)
1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be kind. Be nice. And for heaven's sake no egg fights later today.
3) Running with sharp objects and juggling with filet knives is really, really frowned upon.
4) Have a great weekend. He is Risen!
Please submit any prayer requests to me, “Annie’s Stew” at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks unless we receive an update.
Prayer Requests:
2/14 – L gave an update on her brother Ron. He has been in declining health for the last 6+ months, and has been transferred to a nice facility for hospice. They had been discussing this possibility for months. He would make improvements, then relapse, each time ending up more disabled. The best part is that he is at peace with the decision. He is aware enough to assist with the final plans and is enjoying parceling out his remaining possessions to family and friends. L’s daughter’s cardiac recovery continues. L says she cannot thank all sufficiently for the many prayers.
3/21 Update – Ron’s struggle is over. He died on 3/9. His 65th birthday would have been 3/22. His funeral was well attended and many people described him as their “best friend”. Despite never being married of having children, he leaves a legacy to be proud of. L’s daughter has finally recovered enough to start cardiac rehab. They expect great progress. L and her husband are rebuilding their relationship after putting it on the back burner for far too long, and working to get healthier. Thanks to everyone who prayed. It has meant a lot.
3/5 – IrishEi has learned that she needs major surgery on 3/16, and she would really appreciate prayers.
3/22 Update – JackStraw asked for prayers for IrishEi. She has been in the hospital for nearly a week. It sounds like she is on the mend, hopefully.
3/28 Update - Bluebell was happy to report that IrishEi is home from the hospital and is doing well. She’s very grateful for all the prayers as she knows they helped.
3/7 – Uncle Slayton posted the good news that his son-in-law, Kenny, is almost 3 years cancer-free. He beat lymphoma and leukemia, and Uncle Slayton wanted to thank everyone who prayed for him.
3/7 – Joe Kidd sent an update on a previous prayer, for a young girl named Jasmine. She is the adopted daughter of a friend of a friend. She had been rescued from abuse, but was withdrawn, etc. The friend took the family on an RV trip, and with lots of TLC for Jasmine, things have improved. It appears that God has surrounded this young girl with an army of angels, and your prayers for her are being heard. May those listed here and whispered elsewhere receive similar affirmation.
3/7 – vmom deport deport deport requested prayers for GB, the husband of her friend; he just had a quadruple bypass a couple of days ago, following a heart attack.
3/10 – Warai-otoko asked for prayers for a sister-in-law with some respiratory issues, who just took a hard turn for the worse. Thanks to everyone, even if you just take a fraction of a second for it.
3/10 – Update on Susan, who we have been praying for as she battles cancer. She is hospitalized again with an infection in her colon that quickly turned bad. The doctor says the signs are sepsis but they are running tests to make sure. The good news is that the pancreatic cancer was and is responding to the chemo and her cancer numbers are going down. God bless and thank you!
3/23 Update – Susan finally was able to come home. She is doing better than expected. Thanks to everyone for your prayers.
3/11 – Bulg sends a prayer of thanks. He called his formerly estranged sister on her birthday, and they had a wonderful conversation. It was their second conversation since February, and there was no animosity at all.
3/11 – Doof sent his appreciation for the Horde’s prayers for his mom, who has been in post-hospitalization rehab since mid-January. She has recovered from her illnesses, but her body seems to be increasingly giving up on her. PT has become too painful and exhausting for her. She is also having increased brain fog and is rapidly losing the ability to do things like answer her phone or send texts. Continued prayers requested for her, as she is very sad, and also for Doof and his sister as they figure out what’s next.
3/16 Update – Doof’s mother is not doing very well. Her 100 days of post-hospital rehab will be ending soon, and she is not nearly recovered enough to live alone. She’s almost completely confined to bed. She will be moved to long-term care soon, and will likely be there for the rest of her life. They appreciate the prayers.
3/14 – Retired Buckeye Cop asks for prayers for Mrs. Cop’s cousin, “A.B”. He has been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. He is a retired police officer who was hit by a car years ago. He attempted to deal with the pain by self-medicating with too much Tylenol, which ended up poisoning his liver. His only alternative is a liver transplant, but he is uncertain if he wants to have surgery.
3/21 Update – A.B.’s situation isn’t quite as dire as originally thought. It’s still bad, but his readings are better than originally thought.
3/18 – TecumsehTea requests prayers, as her husband was fired from a job he enjoyed very much on 3/17. Prayers are needed for peace, direction, and clarity. They trust God will provide the right job at the right time, and that He would give them peace in the waiting. TecumsehTea is still dealing with the effects of her heart attack last July. Prayers for healing, as her BP continues to be unstable. Chronic Lyme disease and autoimmune disease complicates everything. She trusts that God is faithful and good and He will take care of their needs.
3/21 – FenelonSpoke asked for prayers for her son, who is still looking for work. He has a horticulture major, and would ideally like something related to research, but he is certainly willing to labor outdoors.
3/21 – Count de Monet gave prayers of thanks for a son who has been accepted into the IBEW Apprenticeship program. He will earn while he learns for 4 years on his way to becoming a Journeyman Electrician.
3/21 – pookysgirl asked for prayers as they start IVF again.
3/22 – Retired Buckeye Cop has a happy prayer request. His 16 year old grandson said he is feeling a call to the priesthood within the Catholic Church. He is a devout young man who has particular compassion for the poor. (He thinks he might want to be a Franciscan friar.) Please pray for L. H. as he pursues the vocation of religious life.
3/24 – GMAC posted that he has received his death sentence. His prostate cancer has metastasized into his bones. Medication will slow it down, but there is no stopping it. He doesn’t know how much time he has, but plans to do some travelling while he can. He sends his compliments to “the wittiest group of morons” he has ever had the pleasure of reading. He will still be lurking.
3/28 – Cosda posted the happy news that a new grandson should be arriving on 3/28.
3/28 – Defenestratus asked for prayers for grief at the loss of a dear friend and boss of 20 years, who passed away unexpectedly on St. Patrick’s Day.
3/28 – San Franpsycho posted that Pnina bat Surel is not improving, sadly. She has had a third hospitalization, and this has taken a toll on her. She is not bouncing back like she has before.
3/28 – From about The Time posted that prayers would be appreciated after the last chemo treatment for Lymphoma. It went reasonably well - thanks for the prayers.
3/28 – Hrothgar asked for prayers for a dear and long time close friend and former neighbor, Daniel, who is scheduled for open heart surgery in mid-April. Prayers for his wife would be appreciated as well, as she will be carrying a heavy load for the next few months.
3/28 – NR Pax posted an update on his father, who we had prayed for in January after his stroke. Dad is going through PT and OT every day at home. Mom got some cooperative people at the VA and a note was put in his record that he was not to have any appointments more than fifteen miles from his house. Things are still rough as Mom is handling things like taxes, investment accounts, and the banking. And Dad’s condition is stable, but it will change sooner or later. But they are living in a great retirement community and he’ll be taken care of.
3/28 – Jordan61 posted that Mr. Jordan61 is back in the hospital. His sepsis has returned and gotten into where his compression fracture is, and he has vertebral osteomyelitis. The doctor is supposed to come in today and let them know the plan.
For submission guidelines and other relevant info, please contact Annie's Stew, who is managing the prayer list. You can contact her at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. If you see a prayer request posted in a thread comment, feel free to copy and paste it and e-mail it to Annie's Stew. She tries to keep up with the requests in the threads, but she's not here all of the time, so she may not see it unless you e-mail it to her. Please note: Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks or so unless we receive an update.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.
Unfortunately this does not represent a collapse in the AI industry - not yet, anyway - but a shortage in key electrical distribution components thanks to the ongoing trade war with China, something that will be resolved relatively quickly as other countries gleefully pick China's bones clean. Metaphorically.
If you have computer, treat it like the one remaining intact moa egg. Not like other formerly remaining intact moa egg, which someone took out of its case and dropped.*
* Google and Grok both say no such event happened. I am feeling gaslit right now
Or you could just install any other flavour of Linux. But ChromeOS is good for non-technical users.
The project at work that has been consuming all my waking hours for the past two months is done, just in time for the Easter long weekend here. I am sleep.
Musical Interlude
Everyone's favourite anticommunist angel is back. The Saga of Tanya the Misunderstood returns this July, after 97 long years away.
For real.
Disclaimer: Close only counts in hand grenades and proximity fuses.
This week American Twitter and Japanese Twitter connected, and it's been awesome. So, Twitter added a new feature where their AI, Grok, automatically translates foreign tweets. A Japanese poster (whose name translates as “Thick Penis) posted a drawing of 3 Americans having the time of their lives at a yakiniku restaurant (Place where you grill your own food). Someone else responded with a picture of some American men around a huge grill with like 30 steaks on it that he would love to experience something like this, and the rush was on. Since we can now read these tweets, everybody started inviting him to come on over and eat. Japanese Twitter responded, and what followed was an absolute lovefest. My own tweet inviting them to come on over has over 213K views.
It. Was. Awesome. We love the Japanese and they love us. I've been on that hellsite for almost 20 years, and this was he most wholesome I've ever seen it. It was fun! We talked food, politics (Japanese Twitter hates leftists), monster trucks, sports, and made jokes.
I even saw several long and respectful discussions of WWII, and of course we talked about girls and sex.
It's been a fun, happy, enjoyable week on Twitter, and I never thought that would happen. Konnichiwa Japan! We love you guys!
Cute: An owl was brooding over lifeless eggs so some humans pulled a switcheroo, replacing the dead eggs with live orphaned chicks. The owl is very happy.
Mom who killed boyfriend and cut off his genitals after catching him raping her daughter is cleared of murder
One cheer for "decarceration."
Now for the bad news: Reading the details of the murder -- she killed her own romantic/sexual partner, and somehow she was able to slip a mickey into a drink and drug this guy while he was "raping her daughter" -- makes me think she just killed this guy out of jealousy and contrived the "raping my daughter" story to justify it.
An enraged mom who cut off her boyfriend's testicles and then set fire to his body after catching him trying to rape her daughter has been cleared of his murder.
Erica Pereira da Silveria Vicente confessed to killing partner Everton Amaro de Silva in Minas Gerais, Brazil -- saying she was just trying to protect her 11-year-old daughter from being raped, according to Estado de Minas.
She was alerted by alarming texts the predator sent the preteen -- then found him on top of her, trying to rape her, when rushing to her screaming daughter, according to the reports.
However, prosecutors insisted that the brutality of the murder proved it was carried out "not in blind rage but with cold premeditation."
The mom allegedly spiked de Silva's drink with Klonopin, a medication used to treat seizures, and then stabbed and clubbed him while he was unconscious, according to prosecutors.
Do rapists often take a drink mid-rape? Does a drugged drink work quickly enough to end a rape mid-rape?
I just ran some scientific tests on this story and my beakers and Erlenmeyer Flasks tell me that this story is forty seven moles of bullshit.
I don't know what happened here, but I know it's not what this woman is claiming happened.
A teen who heard screams helped the mom carry the body to wasteland in Belo Horizonte -- where Vicente cut off the dead man's genitals and set fire to his body, jurors were told.
...
She confessed to the killing -- but insisted it was only to save her daughter.
The jury agreed, and the mom was acquitted Tuesday of aggravated homicide and destroying a corpse after just one day of testimony.
Jaden Ivey didn't last long with the Chicago Bulls before he was waived, let go, or whatever polite term is being used these days to fire someone. It came after he posted a video sharing his thoughts on Pride Month and the NBA.
In it, Ivey spoke openly about his Christian faith and took issue with the league's promotion of Pride Month. He called it unrighteous. He questioned why that message is celebrated so openly while opposing views seem to carry consequences.
By the end of the day, the video was everywhere.
Not long after that, the Bulls announced they were waiving him for what they described as conduct detrimental to the team.
That is the official explanation.
He's coming off an injury but it can't be doubted that political pressure was brought to bear here. Video here.
In this clip, another basketball player says he doesn't want to "go deep" into a question about his religion because of the Jaden Ivey situation, because "I don't wanna get waived."
I'm sure Bobby "The Brain" DeNiro will protest this use of corporate-governmental power to squelch black men's rights.
Some potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidates are introducing themselves to voters in a striking way: by documenting their childhood resentments, family chaos and fights with their parents.
Why it matters: Many presidential hopefuls carry painful memories from complicated childhoods. But few have discussed them as openly as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.
Their frankness about their formative years and family dynamics is a way to shape their public stories before journalists do. It's also a sign of shifting taboos and a growing desire for candidates to appear relatable to voters.
Newsom grew up as private-school twat and family friend of the Getty's, and Pritzker is an obese billionaire nepo baby. I don't know if Josh Shapiro is a rich bitch --
-- update, just got an email from Tucker Carlson, saying, "Look at his last name. Look at his little hat. You know he's rich." Well I'll take that under consideration, Cuck.
They desperately need to show that they've "struggled" in life so out comes the stories of dyslexia and... fights with their parents?
What?
Your daddy wouldn't let you borrow the new Beemer -- just the old one, last year's model without the heated seats -- and you had yourself a sulk and so now you understand the daily grind of the common people?
Can I impress upon you the Healing Power of Shutting the Fuck Up?
You're probably not going to believe me, but a black female Democrat involved in the "Equity" grift turns out to be a fraudster and criminal thief.
Man, I did not have that on today's Bingo card. (Just yesterday's, tomorrow's, and Easter's.)
Last August, I told you the story of a close associate of then-Mayor London Breed named Sheryl Davis. Ms Davis had been on the rocket glide path to San Fran prominence as a member of the city's Human Rights Commission, eventually rising to become its head.
The SF Human Rights Commission, under Ms. Davis's leadership, had a $44M annual budget, which was scheduled to shrink amid the city's 2025-26 money woes to around $28M. Still pretty healthy cha-ching by any measure.
In 2021, in the aftermath of the St. George Floyd incident, she had also been personally tapped by Mayor Breed to lead a multimillion-dollar feel-good investment (described as 'tens of millions of dollars') that the city was making in the black community, dubbed the 'Dream Keeper Initiative.'
A huge pile of money earmarked for a completely vague purpose whose efficacy cannot be proven nor disproven given to a political crony who owes her position only to grifting?!
I see no (intentional) accountability holes here whatsoever!!!
...
The San Francisco Chronicle discovered a $10,000 tab paid for by the Human Rights Commission for a Martha's Vineyard cottage rental. Worse, the invoice had been split, seemingly to evade limits on travel claims, and even worse yet, they had the email from Ms. Davis asking for the workaround.
It snowballed from there.
the ten grand invoice was reportedly for interns (!) in the city's Dream Keeper program who were attending a conference on *checks notes* Martha's Vineyard.
the SF Standard reported that Human Rights Commission executive director Sheryl Davis had signed off on $1.5 million in grants to a nonprofit led by a man she lived with, one James Spingola
the Human Rights Commission's Dream Keeper Initiative had granted a total of $7.5 million to Spingola's Collective Impact nonprofit.
Sheryl Davis got $19,000 in city money for her son's UCLA grad school tuition, as the Chronicle reports.
Spingola's non-profit, Collective Impact, got $27 million in city grants, gave first-class airfare to Davis to promote her book and podcast, plus another $5,000 for Oakland soul singer Goapele to perform at Davis's book launch party.
Davis was Collective Impact's executive director before taking the Human Rights Commission job
The wheels of justice move slowly, but this past Monday, Sheryl Davis surrendered to face 57 pages of legal sheet music.
Once San Francisco's most powerful civil rights watchdog, Sheryl Davis continued her spectacular fall on Monday when she surrendered to authorities to face accusations that she misappropriated funds and engaged in "pervasive" self-dealing while leading a landmark initiative meant to benefit the city's Black community.
See the link for more.
I'm sure she'll explain that she personally paid for the trip to Martha's Vinyard but has no bank transactions to prove it because she paid it out of the huge sums of cash she keeps hidden in the house because her daddy told her that was a great way to store wealth.
Residents of Raleigh, NC, are OUTRAGED that Brice Lewis Forman, a man with at least 39 PRIOR arrests, continues to be let out of jail to terrorize the community.
Forman has previous charges for assault, theft, trespassing, disorderly conduct, public intoxication, and concealed weapons.
Babak Taghvaee - The Crisis Watch
@BabakTaghvaee1
BREAKING: According to CENTCOM, the second U.S. Air Force CSAR team sent into Iran to rescue the crew of the downed F-15E of the 494th Fighter Squadron has successfully located and rescued the second crew member.
He ejected, survived the crash, and is now safe in Iraq.
This is good news for the 48th Fighter Wing community at RAF Lakenheath--both crew members of the downed F-15E are now safe.
Also, the crew members of the second HH-60W helicopter involved in the rescue operation of the second crew member, which was shot upon by means of MANPADS, are also safe.
This is the kind of news which, if true, would be shouted from all five corners of the Pentagon.
I wouldn't even post this but it's being retweeted and I figure everyone will hear about it. If you see an official source confirming this, please let me know.
BREAKING: According to CENTCOM, the second U.S. Air Force CSAR team sent into Iran to rescue the crew of the downed F-15E of the 494th Fighter Squadron has successfully located and rescued the second crew member.
He ejected, survived the crash, and is now safe in Iraq.
— Babak Taghvaee - The Crisis Watch (@BabakTaghvaee1) April 3, 2026
Now, on to the silly crap.
A full-length trailer from Backrooms. It's a lot like House of Leaves, if you read that. I read a hundred pages and decided "I get the gist."
It looks like Uncanny Places are this season's New Hotness.
The Most Dangerous Girlboss. I would say it's something I would see except 1, I don't like Charlize Theron, 2, it's a Netflix movie and you know that's the Mark of Quality, and 3, I'm just so tired of girlbosses I just can't take a movie with a female lead involving danger from a predatory male. That kind of movie should be perfectly acceptable, but you know, at some point you hit your limit on them.
The Lonely Island guys are somehow involved in this husband-and-wife-try-to-murder-each-other comedy.
A comedy-western with John C. Reilly. I don't know what this one is going for.
Scientists hunting for treatments and cures for multiple sclerosis may have found an unlikely ally -- the yak.
The high-altitude, cold-hardy relative of the cow could be the key to a medical breakthrough, according to a March13 study published in the journal Neuron.
At the center of it all is the myelin sheath -- a fatty, protective coating around nerve fibers that helps signals travel between the brain and body.
In MS, the immune system attacks that coating, disrupting communication and triggering neurological symptoms including problems with balance and coordination.
Previous research found that animals living on Tibet's high plateau -- including yaks and antelopes, which roam at average elevations above 14,800 feet -- carry a special genetic mutation called Restat that protects their brains from low-oxygen conditions. Crucially, it does so without damaging the myelin sheath.
Now scientists believe that same gene could help humans repair damaged nerves by regrowing the protective coating, and potentially opening a new door for MS treatment.
The disease typically strikes adults between the ages of 20 and 40. About 1 million Americans are currently living with it, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
To find out if the genetic mutation Restat could play a role in protecting nerve health in humans, Liang Zhang, a neuroscientist at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and his team tested mice engineered with the genetic mutation while living in low-oxygen conditions.
And the results were promising.
The mice engineered to carry the mutant gene not only performed better in memory and behavior tests -- they also had healthier, thicker myelin, according to Zhang's study.
Even better, when their nerves were damaged, these mice repaired their myelin faster and more completely.
The gene works by boosting production of a vitamin A-related molecule called ATDR -- all-trans-13,14-dihydroretinol -- which helps create and mature the cells that make myelin.
I don't know if I want Yak DNA in my body. As a wise man once said, "History shows again and again that nature points up the folly of man."
What's good for your aging gut may also be good for your aging brain.
A first-of-its-kind study in twins found that taking daily protein and prebiotic supplements can improve memory test scores in people over age 60.
Published in 2024, the findings are food for thought, especially as the same visual memory and learning test is used to detect early signs of Alzheimer's disease.
The double-blind trial tested two inexpensive plant-fiber prebiotics that are available over the counter in many countries.
Prebiotics are non-digestible consumables that help stimulate our gut microbes.
One of the supplements was inulin, a dietary fiber in the fructan class. The other, fructooligosaccharide (FOS), is a plant carbohydrate often used as a natural low-calorie sweetener.
Now if you want to go the other way and speed up your cognitive decline, you should do what the Young Idiots are doing and use ChatGPT for everything.
AI chatbots can act as a "cognitive crutch" that reduces our ability to retain information, a new study suggests.
The research was conducted by AI expert André Barcaui of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, who ran an experiment with 120 university students. Half were allowed to use ChatGPT to help them respond to an assignment on the topic of artificial intelligence, and half weren't.
In a surprise test sprung on the participants 45 days after the assignment was given, the students who used ChatGPT scored an average of 5.75 out of 10. For those who took the traditional study route, the average score was 6.85 out of 10.
That's a notable difference, and while this is a relatively small study in terms of participants and timescale, it chimes with other research showing that using AI to find information means we just don't take as much in.
"This suggests that unrestricted ChatGPT use impaired long-term retention, likely by reducing the cognitive effort that supports durable memory," writes Barcaui in his published paper.
This is one of the least-surprising findings I've ever seen.
Now we see what JackStraw was doing with his NIH grant.
Scientists Engineered a Plant to Produce 5 Different Psychedelics at Once
What do plants, toads, and mushrooms have in common? They can all produce psychedelic substances -- and now their powers have been combined in one plant, like a trippier Captain Planet.
In a wild first, scientists have taken the genes these organisms use to make five natural psychedelics and introduced them into a tobacco plant (Nicotiana benthamiana), which then produced all five compounds simultaneously.
As interest grows in psychedelics as potential treatments for illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD, the newly developed system could offer scientists a new way to produce these compounds for research purposes.
"[Our] strategy established a heterologous plant system for the production of five prominent therapeutically valuable compounds, their derivatives, and nonnatural plant analogs, providing a starting point for their production in plants," writes a team led by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
"You smoke the LSD tree and listening to the Grateful Dead becomes so immersive you completely forget how much they suck," said self-declared "part time drifter, full time dreamer" JackStraw.
Frequent Ejaculations Can Boost Sperm Quality, Study Suggests
Wait, it said "ejaculations" not "masturbation sessions." I guess it says something Sad! about me that I read it as being good news for chronic masturbators.
The connection between testosterone and well-being is weaker than many people think. Although there are clear health connections, a higher testosterone level is not always the key to well-being, according to a thesis at the University of Gothenburg's Department of Jonah Goldberg's Unfulfilled Wife.
...
The clearest connections are found in sexual problems with sexual desire, erection and sexual performance, as well as in some muscle and joint pain, as well as sitting on Twitter all day long spamming out trash jokes from 1999."
Muscle health and testosterone are also connected. Higher testosterone levels are linked to higher muscle mass and, above all, to less intramuscular fat. This is especially true in muscles with a high percentage of fat: around the stomach, waist, lower back and hips, and in the chest muscles, the so-called JGFDS, or 'Jonah Goldberg Fat Deposition Sites.'"
Want to increase your physical and mental performance? Take a fake pill. Even if you know it's fake it will still work because you're so gullible.
Some test subjects were given placebos claimed to be a multivitamin with pro-mental and muscular properties. Some test subjects were given an "open placebo," a placebo identified to the patient as a placebo with no real benefits, but were also told that sometimes placebos could grant psychological benefits that would result in real benefits.
Both groups saw benefits from the fake medicine.
A placebo is "an inert treatment presented as active", according to the definition used by these authors. In medical history, placebo effects have been researched by offering an inert treatment as if it were an active intervention. This presumes that the patient's belief is necessary for the effect to occur. However, more recent literature suggests the contrary.
That is, if the placebo effect is satisfactorily explained as involving mind-body interactions, open-label placebos exert effects on patients as strong as deceptive placebos across multiple clinical and experimental parameters. Psychologists attribute this to patients' expectations, which operate through psychological, contextual, and expectancy-driven processes to fulfil them.
...
Within each group, self-reported parameters remained unchanged. Cognitive performance increased from before to after the intervention in both placebo groups. A cognitive inhibition task showed improvement in all groups, including controls, suggesting a likely practice or habituation effect rather than a placebo-specific effect.
Physical functioning improved in both placebo groups, but more significantly in the open-label group, in within-group analyses, although no significant between-group differences were observed at post-intervention.
Specifically, researchers found that the placebo improved physical performance by 7% when taken under deception, and by 9.2% when taken knowingly. Cognitive performance improved, depending on the assessment test used by the psychologists, by between 12.6% and 14.6% in the case of the sham supplement (deceptive placebo), and by between 6.9% and 21.5% in the case of the placebo taken knowingly.
"These are significant effects," the psychologist emphasizes, "comparable to those seen in some experimental studies on physical activity regarding physical performance and cognitive training, especially with regard to memory." Among the various effects observed, there was an improvement in drowsiness and, particularly for the group aware they are taking the placebo, in stress levels.
The discovery of the oldest ever dog DNA suggests they have been our best friends for nearly 16,000 years -- 5,000 years earlier than had previously been thought, new research said Wednesday.
Despite being ubiquitous in the homes, backyards and hearts of people across the world, surprisingly little is known about where dogs come from.
...
Dogs are most likely a mix of two types of grey wolves, he said. However exactly when dogs diverged from wolves has been difficult to trace, partly because their ancient bones are tricky to tell apart.
That is why scientists behind two new studies published in the journal Nature sequenced the genomes from archaeological remains, shedding light on the elusive origins of our furry friends.
The first study revealed that the world's oldest canine DNA was discovered in a piece of a skull in Pinarbasi in what is now Turkey.
The female puppy, which was perhaps "a few months old", probably looked like a small wolf when it lived roughly 15,800 years ago, according to study co-author Laurent Frantz of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Before Wednesday, the oldest-known dog DNA was from 10,900 years ago.
Also breaking that record was genetic evidence the team found in southwest England dating back 14,300 years, which illustrated how early dogs had spread across Europe.
Frantz said scientists could not prove exactly what role these dogs had among humans living during the last Ice Age.
"But I think we can assume that they must have played a role because they would have been expensive to feed," he said.
Perhaps the dogs were used for hunting or protection, he speculated.
Even if these dogs were not treated the same as pets are today, there was likely still a strong bond, he said, adding that "kids will still have played with puppies".
And now for the big question: Does anyone have any health gains they'd like to report to the group?
I don't have any. I've been low-carb pretty consistently, but the only result is that I'm not gaining weight. I'm losing none. I really do have to start exercising again.
Last September, Pastor Jason Howard of the Sanctuary Church in Pittsburgh saw a surge of young people flocking to his Christian congregation, the week after Charlie Kirk was murdered.
Howard knew that something had shifted. Yes, their congregation had always been predominantly youth-driven, but this was different. Lines began to form for their services. Public transportation was dropping off children by the busload from campuses across the city, and he knew that he had an obligation to expand. Howard teamed up with local college students at the University of Pittsburgh, and a revival called Pitt Purposes was held on campus, attracting about 600 students and led by members of the university's football team.
But the youth movement didn't pause. In fact, it grew, leading to last week's revival at the University of Pittsburgh's Peterson Center that attracted thousands and included hundreds of baptisms, most in pickup trucks.
Howard said that after Pitt for Jesus happened in the fall, they really wanted to do a follow-up. "Our hope was that we could do something big like at the Petersen Event Center," he said.
Jake Overman, the captain of the Pitt football team, reached out to Unite Us, a ministry that has partnered with university students to organize big arena events at college campuses. Overman, who might get drafted or picked up as a free agent in next month's draft in Pittsburgh, led the Pitt for Jesus movement last fall.
There is one catch: Unite Us almost exclusively does events below the Mason-Dixon line. Nonetheless, they secured the Petersen Event Center, located in the middle of the Oakland Campus, and Overman and an army of students began canvassing the local campuses here for turnout.
There are several universities and colleges in the Pittsburgh area: Carnegie Mellon, Duquesne, Robert Morris, LaRoche, Point Park, Carlow, Chatham, and Allegheny Community College.
By the time the event happened last week, over 5,000 young people were in attendance, with several hundred of them choosing to be baptized that evening.
They are not alone. For the first time in decades, faith in this country is growing, not retreating -- particularly among our young people, something that I've been reporting for the past year. In my rural parish, a Roman Catholic Church in the Diocese of Greensburg, our attendance has nearly doubled since last fall. Unless you get to Mass at least 15 minutes before services begin, you are left standing for the entire service -- and that is with added folding chairs in the back, along the side, and with the choir pews above us filled.
...
On Sunday, the Mother of Sorrows parish, which is also part of the Diocese of Greensburg, also had standing-room-only services on Palm Sunday. This has become the norm every Sunday. All three parking lots were packed, with cars straddling the grass leading down to the highway. Nearby Dick's Diner was also filled with parishioners.
The surge in Roman Catholic Church converts is being felt across the United States. Dioceses in the Rust Belt, Midwest, and Bible Belt are seeing record numbers of people received into the Catholic Church. Last fall, the New York Times reported that the Archdioceses of Detroit, Galveston-Houston, and Des Moines are also seeing significant increases.
...
"What we're witnessing right now is an answer to many years of prayers," he said. "Seeing this many college students turn to Jesus, and not just in a casual way but in a passionate way; willing to follow him wholeheartedly."
...
"I think overall young people are really looking for something real, and I think that this generation has really gotten to the point where the world seems out of control, and the world seems to be so subjective," Howard said.
He added that people are desperately looking for something absolute to anchor their lives in. "And, of course, God is the absolute that can anchor our lives."
Haz
@Michael_Haz
The TLM order that has been entrusted with my parish cannot ordain new priests fast enough to keep up with the requests from bishops to take over closed churches for parishoners who have asked for a Latin Mass. Wherever they are sent, the once-closed churches have filled pews several times, every Sunday. It's a beautiful thing to see and hear, especially all the newly initiated young singles, couples and families.
Obama-Biden Have Implemented Stealth Communism Plus: Hobbit/LOTR Reading Progress Thread
—Disinformation Expert Ace
You probably remember that Obama partially "solved" his unemployment crisis by simply changing the standards about who was eligible to collect Medicaid and disibility insurance. By the stroke of a pen, he changed administrative standards so that the chronically unemployed -- his voters, I mean -- would get paid by the government. They would of course be loyal to the man giving them free money, and putting them on these programs took them out of the unemployed pool and made the numbers look better.
Say anyone else remember "Jobs Saved and Created"? Remember, it's Trump who's the liar who makes up his own fake facts, not the demon Obama.
Nic Carter wrote a post discussing Biden greatly expanding upon the Obama plan to impose socialist guaranteed income (or UBI, "Universal Basic Income," long the dream of AOC and her communist allies) -- at least for his voters. The people controlling the Biden Autopen simply ended all authentication/auditing for the billions of dollars they robbed from hardworking taxpayers to give to their cronies. Anyone who spent an hour filling out paperwork could have $500 million, with no chance of ever being caught for fraud, because Biden's Autopen turned off all fraud detection, deliberately.
We blame Somali pirates for plundering us but the Democrat-Communist Party did this too us, deliberately. They could not pass a reparations bill, so they allowed all of their voters to just requisition their own personal reparations funds from taxpayers by simply opening a "hospice business" or even a "learing center."
Read it all:
nic carter
@nic_carter
it hasn't sunk in for most people. we already live in a post-scarcity society. UBI [Universal Basic Income] is already here.
bonus package: literally getting paid for staying at home and hanging out with your relatives
extra bonus: if you are willing to commit fraud, pretend your kids are autistic and get paid for that. get paid for watching your neighbor's kid. pretend you are taking care of your grandma. fake hospice clinic. fake rehab clinic. fake therapy clinic.
giga bonus: during a time of crisis take advantage of PPP or CARES and open a fake business and get paid for existing
people are shocked when they learn that defense is the FIFTH largest line item in the budget. ahead of defense: social security ($1.6T), interest on debt ($1.1T) medicare ($1T), medicaid + ACA ($1T), AND THEN defense ($0.9T)
complain about defense all you like, but healthcare fraud is a way bigger factor. hundreds of billions per year.
this is only going to get worse, because the fraud is a structural part of the system -- payouts to client groups in exchange for votes (normally D).
in the US, only 47% of the population actually works (fully 14% of the population is working age and does not work). retirees are 18% and children 22%.
the system I described above subsidizes 50m non-working people absolute minimum, but really it's far more because people that are paid to stay home and take care of their relatives are considered "workers"
of that 47% of "actual workers" maybe one third does real work, the rest are shuffling papers around or doing fake email jobs. so you have, rough math, 50 million actual workers supporting 300 million dependents. that's the nature of the economy today. it will only accelerate. eventually you will have 10 million using AI tools to do all the work and 340 million dependents.
the reason no one roots out the fraud is because it's the system that keeps our extremely fragile polity intact. the fraud is the UBI. the purpose of the system is what it does.
of course, it's a deeply unfair system, because you are allowed to commit fraud if you are a politically protected client group of the democrats. DOGE was killed faster than any government program ever, because it attempted to root out the fraud. if you are honest and unwilling to commit fraud, you are a huge loser in this system. your neighbor will have their mortgage subsidized by some government program. they will get favorable SBA loans due to DEI. they will open a fake hospice or autism clinic. they will get paid for taking care of their neighbor's kid and vice versa. the primary skill in the labor market is learning how to extract money from state and federal government programs, not gaining skills or making yourself employable. if you are just trying to work an ordinary wagie job you are a huge sucker. you are paying 40-50% effective all in taxes to everyone else who is a net taker.
the sad part is because AI is such a substantial productivity boost, it will actually keep this system going for a while longer, and maybe in perpetuity. AI boosts the 15% of the population that is actually productive so much that the remaining 85% can coast by. no one in charge will change this because they can't think of anything else. the political costs of a real UBI program are too great and we don't have the money for it anyway. so we will keep this covert fraud-based UBI program running indefinitely. unfortunately, if you are an honest wagie, you lose.
Related: Video of the FBI arresting eight fraudsters, in an operation they call Operation Never Say Die.
That's a joke -- the people in "Hospice care" never actually die because they're not sick at all and their information has been obtained and used fraudulently.
I mean, the FBI gave the operation that jokey name. It's the operation's real name, but it's a humorous one.
Related: Part of the plan is also to replace the native population, of course.
And how's that going?
🚨 BREAKING: It was just revealed that the Chinese suspects who tried detonating an IED at a US Air Force Base were BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENS of ILLEGAL ALIENS
Omg. This is EXACTLY what Justice Sam Alito tried telling everyone at the Supreme Court!
Leading Democrat Calls for Reparations for Illegal Immigrants
As Chicago and other blue cities move toward reparations for African Americans, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D, Wa.) wants reparations for illegal immigrants for the trauma caused by immigration enforcement. At the same time, various Democrats are making clear that they want to entirely defund and eliminate Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So, after the Biden Administration allowed in millions over an open border, Democrats would eliminate ICE and some like Jayapal would pay illegal immigrants reparations.
Rep. Jayapal declared on Friday:
"They need to be brought before us, and they need to be held account [sic] for the trauma that they have created, and we are going to have to have some form of reparation for the kids and the families that have been traumatized through all of this."
While not calling for reparations, other democrats have picked up the theme that someone has to pay for the trauma caused by immigration enforcement.
Unrelated: For those joining me on a trip to Middle Earth, how is it going?
I did barely any reading the last three nights. Tuesday night I ran out for a 10 pm showing of Project Hail Mary and Wednesday and Thursday nights I worked late to write a bunch of (mostly open thread) posts for today and Monday.
Today I'm going to jump back in and finish The Hobbit so I can start Fellowship by Saturday.
If you haven't read the Hobbit yet, let me recommend it vigorously. It is a fast, exciting, fun, and very funny read. You may not think of Tolkien as funny because the Lord of the Rings is serious and weighty, but the Hobbit has jokes on almost every page. If you like cheeky British humor, you'll smile a lot.
I think in Lord of the Rings, it took about 180 pages to get to Rivendell, and then we spent, IIRC, two (or even three) 50-70 chapters at that place.
In the Hobbit, we arrive in Rivendell around page 60, and we spend six pages there. Just six. Tolkien directly addresses the reader and says that while grim, scary, and unpleasant stories may be interesting and take many pages to tell, stories of places that are lovely and welcoming and relaxing do not make for good stories, and thus are told much more quickly. He's always making these kind of playful asides to the reader. (And in LOTR, he retcons the Hobbit to divulge that it was actually written by Bilbo Baggins himself, writing in the third person but usually from the POV of Bilbo. So we learn that the amusing narrator of the book is none other than the main character himself).
The book is about 320 pages and they are fast pages. If you've ever been put off by the hulking Lord of the Rings, and thought "I just can't commit to a 1,200 page book," give The Hobbit a try. To be honest, I think it's better than LOTR. I've read it about 10 times and I've only read through LOTR completely twice. (And the first time I did a lot of skimming.)
Oh -- and don't compare it to the bloated movies, which padded the hell out of everything to make it move at the slower pace of LOTR.
Anyway, that's where I am, just leaving Rivendell and heading for the Misty Mountains.
Some biologists have discovered this strange tree in New Zealand. According to experts, it is heading to Isengard to destroy Saruman. pic.twitter.com/fqTRGXlkmp
Iran shot down what appears to be a fighter plane on Friday, Iranian state media reported, in what would be the first time that Tehran downed an American jet since the war broke out five weeks ago.
The search and rescue is underway for two service members.
The Hill has reached out to the U.S. Central Command, which oversees the U.S. military's actions in the region, for comment.
Iranian state media released photos purportedly showing parts of the plane, indicating it was a U.S. F-15 fighter jet.
Tasnim News Agency, the semiofficial news outlet affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported that the U.S. sent out a C-130 Hercules plane and Black Hawk helicopters to look for the crew.
Axios claims "a source familiar with the incident" -- no statement whether the "source" is American or enemy comms from Iran -- confirms the shoot-down.
Their new headline claims the US (or, perhaps, Israel) has successfully "rescued" one of the two pilots and continue searching for the other:
U.S. fighter jet shot down in Iran: One crew member rescued, search for other ongoing
If it's true that we have spec ops in the area and they found one pilot, the chances are good that they will also locate the other, who probably isn't more than a few miles from his partner.
But I don't know if any of this is true. I guess the US is refusing to confirm the reports, but you'd expect the US to refuse comment until the situation is resolved.
This is one of the two disaster scenarios I've been fearing (if true). The other is that an Iranian missile gets very, very lucky and manages to badly damage a $13 billion aircraft carrier, which would immediately reduce US air power and also be a huge propaganda victory encouraging the left-wing (and pseudo-rightwing) anti-American agitators to demand we leave the mullahs to slaughter their citizens and bomb our allies in peace. Because America's enemies are justified in using force to advance their political position, whereas America (and Israel!) of course are never so justified, ever, never ever ever.
On X, a picture of an ejector seat allegedly found by Iran was posted. But people claimed it was a fake and did not look like a bona-fide Air Force ejector seat.
Grok says that "OSINTDefender" is often wrong. "OSINT" means, I presume, "Open Source Intelligence," so, in other words, they're just getting this from the internet, and we know Iran is claiming a shoot-down on the internet.
We're all Open Source Intelligence Officers now, aren't we?
If this is true -- and I don't know that it is -- one thing that may help the missing pilot(s) is the warm regard many, but not all, Iranians have for the US/Israeli action against the Islamic Occupational Army of Iran.
THE MORNING RANT: My Gripe Against Hollywood – the Unintelligible, Artistic Mumble
—Buck Throckmorton
Hollywood is not my normal beat. I once wrote a piece about David Zaslav’s looting of Warner Bros Discovery after he ran the company into the ground while extracting generational wealth for himself. But in general, I am happy to keep up with the business of Hollywood by following Christian Toto (Hollywood in Toto), George MF Washington’s Hollywood-insider substack (The Continental Congress) and by reading Ace’s accounts of Disney’s self-immolation.
So, with Ace and them fighting the political fight involving Hollywood, I’d like to weigh in on another subject related to the industry - I can’t understand half the dialogue in the shows I stream.
Dear Hollywood: Enough with the artistic mumble.
Watching streaming series is a relatively new thing for my wife and me. Both of us fell out of the habit of watching TV series several decades ago, and it was only in the past five years or so that we’ve picked up the habit again here in the streaming era. On weekend nights when we’re not out, we enjoy watching a couple episodes of whatever show we’re following, but I sometimes feel like giving up on it since half of the dialogue nowadays is barely intelligible.
The problem is not a hearing issue. At my office, I’m sometimes involved in whispered conversations about semi-confidential matters. There are also women who talk in vocal fry. In office meeting there is overlapping chatter. In all these circumstances, everyone is still understandable. The problem is not my ears.
I’m not sure if Hollywood is full of actors who no longer know how to articulate, or if it’s sound engineers who make the actors’ speech inaudible, or some combination of the two.
The speaking affectation in modern shows seems to be equal parts mumble, whisper, and vocal fry. I cannot turn my TV up loud enough for some conversations to be greater than a whisper, or understandable. I might think it was my TV, but we replaced a TV recently, and nothing changed. Even more telling, the speech in news and sports broadcasts is still loud, crisp, and easily understood, as are old sitcoms and TV series.
At times I wonder if there is a “mumble filter” through which Hollywood sound engineers are now subjecting audio. My wife and I were very late to the series “Justified.” We watched the original series just about the time the 2023 reboot, “City Primeval,” came along. We never had any problem understanding what was being said in the original Justified, but the reboot was almost completely unintelligible. Almost all speaking was a barely audible mumble, and even Timothy Oliphant now sounded like he was whispering through a mouth full of marbles, unlike in the original series. Was a conscious decision made to have spoken words be mostly inaudible?
People do not talk like this in real life. This Hollywood speaking affectation is just as fake as the Mid-Atlantic accent of Hollywood’s golden era – but at least we could understand what was being said in those old movies.
It’s also noteworthy that despite the prevalence of the “artistic mumble,” there are still actors who will not be mumbled. Billy Bob Thornton speaks slowly and clearly, and I never have any trouble understanding him. Jamie Lee Curtis has been in several shows we’ve watched recently. She still projects her voice and speaks with authority. There is far more art in their performances than from those actors who are mumbling lines without breathing or moving their lips.
Please, Hollywood, I’m willing to consume your product. Can you have your actors and sound engineers retire the artistic mumble before I give up on Hollywood again?
*****
Throckmorton’s First Law of Live Music: “If There’s an Upright Bass in the Band, It’s Probably Going to be Good”
Something sweet and heartwarming happened on Twitter/X this past weekend – a mutual-admiration love affair broke out between conservative Americans who respect Japan and its culture, and conservative Japanese who admire our culture, all of whom seek to preserve their own cultures against hostile immigration.
There was a lot of good-natured ribbing and affectionate cultural appropriation flying around between Japan and the U.S., including Japanese cowgirls, celebrations of beef and sushi, and some cross-pollinated music.
In that spirit, here is a Japanese band performing the bluegrass classic “Fox on the Run.”
She probably wasn’t as bad as her detractors think she was (her job is harder than most realize), but she wrongfooted herself so badly there was no recovery. . . I must admit that I had a problem with Bondi from the get-go because of her involvement in the 2012 George Zimmerman case. Zimmerman was acquitted because he acted in self-defense, something that was always obvious if one paid attention to the facts without being blinded by racial politics. Bondi was the Florida AG at the time, and she supported Angela Corey, the special prosecutor who indicted Zimmerman. . . Since Bondi took over, there have been two complaints: First, she’s failed to bring any indictments against the Democrats who have played fast and loose with the law since Trump’s first day in office. Second, she’s failed to bring any indictments in connection with the Epstein matter or even to name names. . . Whether a victim of circumstances, misspeaking, or genuine boneheadedness, Bondi wasn’t working, so today, Trump made a very kind announcement that she’s out:
Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year. Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with Murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900. We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future, and our Deputy Attorney General, and a very talented and respected Legal Mind, Todd Blanche, will step in to serve as Acting Attorney General. . .
Given the vicissitudes of politics, it is reasonable to ask did Bondi screw the pooch or was she handed a pre-screwed pooch to begin with when she got pinned with the badge as America's top cop? And depending upon what happens in Iran as well as the midterms, when It comes time for this President to depart the Oval Office come late January of 2029, we may very well be asking the very same question. As the saying goes "Personnel is Policy," and especially in his first term, President Trump made some horrible choices for his cabinet and other key advisors. To his credit, Hegseth, Rubio and Zeldin have been outstanding, and I envision the first two as potential if not likely presidential candidates, if not in 2028 then certainly 2030 and beyond.
we were talking about the complete bastardization of the 14th amendment vis a vis birthright citizenship for the spawn of illegal aliens and other non-citizens who intentionally or otherwise give birth on our territory and then voila, instant American!
There isn’t really. We mostly choose not to pursue denaturalization. Yes, past Supreme Court decisions have made denaturalization more difficult than it was ever meant to be, but mostly we don’t even try.
Here’s what happens when we do try.
. . . “Gaining citizenship after committing serious crimes against the American people is an unacceptable abuse of our immigration system,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “These latest denaturalizations illustrate this Department of Justice’s focus on ensuring that citizenship remains a privilege to obtain, not a right to abuse.”
That’s the important precedent being set here.
The actions of the two spies were not even extraordinary. Sadly a huge chunk of Chinese Communist ‘students’ and ‘researchers’ operating in the United States are doing the exact same things.
For decades, the Chi-Coms in particular have been actively promoting so-called "birth tourism" sending pregnant Chinese women to America for the specific purpose of giving birth here so that their little bastards can become automatic citizens and then ultimately Red Chinese agents, actively working to undermine us from within via espionage/sabotage as and when directed or merely to vote en masse as a bloc to influence our elections by putting in office leftist traitors.
And so with the above, it perhaps puts the tenure of Pam Bondi as AG in a bit more flattering light. And if we are willing to denaturalize those who abrogated their oath of citizenship by betraying us then perhaps we can do this en masse to however many thousands of Somalis, Afghanis, and other third-world turncoats who never had any intention of assimilating but of at a minimum being leeches and at worst, fifth columnists.
So, fare thee well Pam Bondi and thank you for this and laying the groundwork for more of this. Hopefully your successor will do exactly this.
California's top Democratic gubernatorial candidate has plenty of problems with his residency, his primary residence mortgage issues, and his lovelorn involvement with a Chinese spy who helped him pick his congressional staff.
His lack of fitness for office, though, is all the worse because of his financial problems, including some bizarre and outrageous campaign expenses and failure to file his taxes on time, along with an unverified social media report claiming that he sexually harassed interns and then paid them off by forcing them to sign non-disclosure agreements. . .
. . . According to JustTheNews:
California governor candidate Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell's finances show that he delayed paying his federal taxes, and spends the most on child care in the House with campaign funds.
Swalwell and his wife, Brittany, made an average income of more than $444,000 from 2021 to 2024, which included cash-raising moves such as drawing down retirement accounts, delaying federal tax payments, and spending on child care with campaign funds, according to tax returns and campaign finance filings, the Sacramento Bee reported.
The Swalwells' income puts them in the top 5% of households in Washington, D.C., where the couple owns a $1.2 million home, in addition to the congressman renting a room in Livermore, Calif., owned by another family.
Lest we forget his consorting and cavorting with a known Red Chinese Spy Fang-Fang which earned him the nickname Yum Yum during a Congressional hearing last year but considering who she is and works for, makes it not a matter for levity.
Denaturalizing immigrant fraudsters like the aforementioned and please God BRO-FO OMAR and her ilk is one thing.
Treason trials for Swalwell and everyone like him should also be a priority, if not a pipedream.
Lastly, here's wishing all of you a Blessed Easter!
Have a great weekend!
And a quick shout-out and a huge thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.
ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY LINKS
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will lead the Department of Justice (DOJ) in the interim, President Donald Trump announced. . . Bondi faced consistent backlash over her handling of the Epstein files. She claimed in February 2025 to have Epstein’s client list on her desk and delivered binders containing little new information days later to conservative influencers at the White House. Pam Bondi’s Tenure As Trump’s Overpromising AG Comes To Abrupt End
Fred Fleitz: Trump’s Iran strategy aims for swift, decisive victory—crushing nuclear ambitions and ending the war in weeks, not years, without risking American boots on the ground. President Trump Lays Out His Iran War Endgame
Douglas Murray: Across the Middle East and Europe there has been a long-standing awareness that this action was going to have to happen someday. It’s just that few countries were willing to do anything about it. One of the only people who admitted this publicly was the Chancellor of Germany, who said last summer when American and Israeli pilots first headed towards Iran’s reactors that they were doing the world’s “dirty work” on behalf of everyone else. That is absolutely true. World leaders should be grateful the US is doing what’s necessary in Iran
Kharazi’s Tehran residence was hit early Thursday, killing his wife and leaving the 81-year-old former foreign minister hospitalized with severe injuries, according to Iranian newspapers Shargh, Etemad and Ham Mihan, as reported by The Telegraph. Kharazi had been working with Pakistani intermediaries to set up a potential sit-down between Iranian officials and Vance, the outlet reported. Key Iranian Official Involved In Peace Talks Reportedly Severely Wounded In Strike
. . . the second front of the Iran war will inevitably recommence the day after the military phase of the operation concludes — and may prove the more deadly for the Islamic Republic. Ideally, the reality of looming economic catastrophe will incentivize the Iranian negotiators to accept Trump’s demands: no nuclear program, no missile program, no navy, and no military-industrial base. Absent this, economic collapse will be very difficult to avoid. Iran war has a ‘second front’ — and Tehran has already lost it
Joe Kent is attempting the tried-and-true career-advancement strategy of so-called Republicans: betray the Trump administration and reap the rewards of newfound fame. Joe Kent's Smart Career Move
CIVIL WAR 2.0, LEFTIST PERSECUTIONS, DEMOCRAT PUTSCH, AMERICAN DISSOLUTION
Is President Donald Trump some sort of modern king, as claimed by the marching malcontents? ‘No Kings’ (Except Ours)
From the O. J. Simpson trial to Britain’s “swift courts,” justice now bends to identity—proof that without shared culture, the scales no longer balance. The Demise of Trial by Jury
The nine Supreme Court justices carried on completely unfazed by the president’s first-time presence in their courtroom for oral arguments on birthright citizenship. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Elena Kagan still exchanged a few laughs. Justice Samuel Alito periodically shut his eyes and reclined as far back as his chair would allow as attorneys spoke. Chief Justice John Roberts held to the strictest decorum. What I Saw Inside The Supreme Court During Trump’s Historic Visit
In a strictly legal sense, there's no evidence I'm aware of tying California Gov. Gavin Newsom to his state's multi-multi-billion-dollar fraud problem. But if you'll let me walk you through today's shocking numbers, maybe you'll agree that some sort of investigation is warranted. The $196 Billion Question: Where Did California’s Medi-Cal Money Go?
DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, THE COURTS, WASTE/FRAUD/ABUSE
She probably wasn’t as bad as her detractors think she was (her job is harder than most realize), but she wrongfooted herself so badly there was no recovery. Pam Bondi is out!
WE-ALL-SLAM-FOR-I-SLAM
On the one hand, America enshrines religious freedom and equal treatment for all religions. On the other, supremacist indoctrination is central to Islam. What to do? Should Texas fund Muslim education?
Glover's answer is a quiet rebuke to all of it. He's not dismissing representation. He's doing something harder. He's asking us to be above obsessing over identity, for us to get to a point where the history being made is just human history. A Reporter Asked Artemis II Astronaut About Race. His Response Was Perfect.
* * * * *
While innovations in robotic automation may create new and exciting economic opportunities, a world without work is something none of us should desire. Big Tech’s Plan To Make Work ‘Optional’ Is Evil
In theory, labor unions are supposed to focus on improving the compensation and working conditions of American workers. But graduate student unions at leading universities don’t seem to care much about those things and instead are consumed by hatred of Israel and repeating the talking points of America’s enemies. Graduate Student Unions Push Anti-American, Antisemitic Agendas
Hegseth noted, “The Second Amendment of our Constitution enshrines the right of all citizens to carry weapons to protect themselves, their families, and their countrymen.” He pointed out that “warfighters” are “no less entitled to keep and bear arms than any other American.” Secretary of War Signs Memorandum to End Military Bases as Gun-Free Zones
AMERICA AND THE WORLD IMPRISONED: CHINESE+Fauci-created CORONAVIRUS FICTIONS AND FACTS
DEMOCRAT/LEFTIST AND RINO SCANDALS, MESHUGAS, CHUTZPOCRISY, INSANITY
The agents, some wielding guns, arrived at the residences of Democrat City Councilwoman Farah Louis and Hochul administration Assistant Secretary of Intergovernmental Affairs Debbie Louis on March 23, four days after they were named in a warrant, Politico reported Thursday, citing the sisters’ mother. The reported raid and warrant came amid an investigation into whether the Louis sisters and Edu Hermelyn, whose wife is a state assemblywoman and chairs the Brooklyn Democratic Party, received bribes in exchange for supporting migrant shelter provider BHRAGS Home Care Inc. Gun-Wielding Feds Reportedly Raid Homes Of Democrat Sisters In Migrant Shelter Fraud Probe
Virginia Senate candidate Mark Moran announced Thursday that he is leaving the Democrat Party and continuing his run as an independent, the Daily Caller News Foundation has exclusively confirmed. EXCLUSIVE: Democrat Senate Candidate Leaves Party To Put ‘Our Country First’ (Does this make him a Fetter-man or a faker? - jjs)
ISRAEL vs IRAN & GAZA/HAMAS, HEZBOLLAH . . . AND LEFTISTS
The Islamic Republic of Iran’s ongoing disruption of oil tanker and other shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has wreaked havoc on fuel and energy prices across Asia, with many nations imposing strict rationing measures. The Iran War is Forcing China to Hike Fuel Surcharges for Domestic Flights.
The new Rubin Observatory, a ground-based telescope in Chile, has discovered over 11,000 new asteroids in its first preliminary observations, with most in the main asteroid belt but a large number in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune and 33 previously unknown near-Earth asteroids. The new Rubin telescope discovers over 11,000 new asteroids in first observations
Stock experts have predicted this stock sale could garner SpaceX as much as $75 billion in cash, which would give it the resources to not only build its proposed million-satellite data center constellation in orbit but also develop the Starship/Superheavy infrastructure to build its own data center on the Moon. ... If SpaceX does raise that much, it will truly become America’s space program, doing far more that NASA and much faster — financed voluntarily by the American people. SpaceX files initial paperwork for going public
Working in thick sediment and almost zero visibility 15 meters (49 feet) beneath the waves, divers are in a race against time to unearth the 19th-century wreck of the Dannebroge before it becomes a construction site in a new housing district being built off the Danish coast. Warship Sunk by Admiral Nelson in 1801 Rediscovered by Archaeologists
And the story both books tell of this 19th century war is remarkably pertinent to modern 21st century events, which is another reason to read both. In the prologue of Kilmeade/Yaeger book the authors describe the first meeting of Jefferson and John Adams with Tripoli’s ambassador to Great Britain in London, Sidi Haji Abdrahaman. Both tried their best to convince the envoy that his government’s best policy would be to stop the piracy and instead allow open trade with America. Both were horrified however by his response. America’s first foreign war on “the shores of Tripoli” has apparently never ended
“McKinsey is a quintessential institution of the post-World War II era... Being an English major is pretty good preparation for a career in consulting... McKinsey often sits on both sides of the table... Burnham foresaw all of this.” The McKinsey Century
ALSO: The Morning Report cross-posts at CutJibNewsletter.com usually within an hour or so of posting here, if you want to continue the conversation all day.
The crew of the Artemis II mission - basically retreading the path of Apollo 10, 97 years ago - ran into an issue that didn't happen last time: The spacecraft's computer has two instances of Microsoft Outlook running, and neither one works.
At least that's better than unidentified floating poop (though we may yet come to that) or a Main B Bus Undervolt.
These displays are designed to automatically lower the refresh rate to as little as 1Hz (from a maximum of 120Hz) when the user is looking at a static screen, since the constant refresh cycle is a major power draw.
Tested in Dell's latest XPS 14 model (which I think is the first laptop shipping with these panels) a battery life test simulating simple web browsing with the screen brightness set to 150 nits saw the laptop lasting 43 hours. That's three times longer than Apple's M5 MacBook Air running with the same settings.
Apple's CPUs are more power-efficient than Intel's so heaver workloads handed the win to the Air, but the new display panel certainly proved itself.
At question here was Delve's software offering Pathways which looked remarkably like open-source solution SimStudio with the numbers filed off. Delve disputed the allegations... And then scrubbed all mention of Pathways from its website.
Apple is reportedly buying all the RAM available at inflated prices to force its competitors out of the market.
Samsung's mobile division tried to sign a long-term supply contract with Samsung's memory division last year - and was rebuffed in favour of putting the screws to Apple. A move that reportedly succeeded splendidly... For Samsung's memory division, which is now getting paid twice as much per gigabyte. Not for the rest of us.
Intel's Arc Pro B60 is a professional-level graphics card using the same chip as the company's B580 consumer card, but with twice the memory - 24GB rather than 12GB.
Maxsun's iteration of this puts two B60s on a single card, and it acts... Exactly like two B60s. Exactly like two B60s, because the B60 only uses 8 lanes of PCIe 5.0 (not really a constraint given its healthy allotment of RAM), and this card requires your motherboard to set that slot in x8/x8 bifurcation mode so that the two units on the card are addressed independently.
(If you have something else sharing bandwidth on that slot so that it's already in x8 mode, only half of this card will work.)
Not sure exactly how it performs - the reviewer ran multiple benchmarks but doesn't provide direct comparisons to anything else. But for gaming, it performs exactly like a B580, because games only see one of the two GPUs on the card.
Musical Interlude
Disclaimer: No, Houston, the poop is not floating. It's worse than that.
On July 14 of last year, Angela Lipps was at her Tennessee home babysitting four children when armed police officers came and took her away at gunpoint. She was later booked as a fugitive in relation to a bank fraud investigation in North Dakota, over 1,000 miles away. The only problem was that Lipps had never been to North Dakota.
The grandmother of five told investigators that she had lived most of her life in north-central Tennessee and had never even been on a plane. Unfortunately, police in Fargo, North Dakota, had obtained a signed warrant for her arrest on multiple charges, including felony theft and felony unauthorised use of personal identifying information.
Angela Lipps later learned that she had been identified as a suspect in an organised bank fraud case. Investigators reviewing cases in April and May 2025, in which a woman used a fake US Army military ID to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars from banks, used facial recognition software on surveillance camera footage and identified the Tennessee grandmother as the main suspect.
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After spending over three months in a Tennessee jail, at the end of October 2025, Angela Lipps was put on a plane and flown to North Dakota, where she was once again jailed simply because an AI recognition software decided her facial features, body type and hairstyle matched those of a crime suspect.
Video segment at the link.
Putting more automated stuff to use by government entities sure is a great idea, huh?
In its early days, Twitter alternative Bluesky tried to paint itself as a safe haven from the onslaught of AI, promising in November 2024 that it had “no intention” of scraping user-generated posts to train AI models.
It was a shot across the bow, clearly aimed at its rival X-formerly-Twitter, which had recently changed its terms of service to allow just that. And since then, backlash to AI slop and relentless AI integrations has grown to new heights.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Bluesky’s abrupt foray into AI isn’t sitting well with its notoriously anti-AI user base.
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“You control it, you shape it, without having to write code or know how to set up these feeds,” Schneider enthused.
The CEO seemed well aware of the headwinds against launching consumer-facing AI products in 2026.
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Graber appeared to be aware of the inflood of hatred for the idea. When a user told her that “we don’t want it,” she replied with a curt: “then don’t use it — it’s a separate app.”
Graber also reshared a post by a different user who claimed people “on the left” were being “shortsighted” by being willfully blind about AI, and that the argument “‘hope it goes away’ doesn’t have a great track record as a strategy for contesting control of new political domains and technologies.” The implication: Bluesky users are wrong about their resentment over AI and should instead embrace it.
Left on left drama and fighting is always a good thing!
A slab of limestone excavated in 1984 from the ancient Coriovallum settlement in the Netherlands presented a puzzle for researchers of Roman history. Because of its distinct grooves and marks, the stone piece was believed to be some kind of board game – but obviously no rulebook was dug up to confirm this. Now, more than 40 years on, new technology appears to have solved the mystery.
An international team of researchers led by Maastricht University in the Netherlands, along with Leiden University, Australia's Flinders University, the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and The Roman Museum and restoration studio Restaura in Heerlen, have used 3D scans and AI to unravel the rules of this mysterious game that no human has been able to figure out.
The oval-shaped stone, roughly 8.3 x 5.7 inches (21 x 14.5 cm) in diameter and marked on one side with distinct intersecting lines, had all the hallmarks of a game played in ancient times. As the researchers note in their paper, people around the world have played games since at least the Bronze Age (around 3000 BCE). A lot haven't survived due to materials used, but the Coriovallum limestone had withstood the test of time.
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They programmed two AI bots to play a digital version of the limestone-etched board, with more than 100 different sets of rules from other games throughout history we know of. The AI players had 1,000 goes at each of these other games, and then a pattern emerged. Nine "rules" the other games had were consistent with this mysterious one.
Using AI to come up with new rules to a game might actually be fun. Got any ideas??
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Easter is a few days away. This sure takes me back to my days as a wee Doof. How about you?
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One week from today - "A Tradition Unlike Any Other"
When I was young, I wondered why my Easter egg decorating kit said it was for "Paques." That's just the French for the old Latin term "Pascha" which just means Pesach or Passover. Most Romance language countries call Easter something like "Paques:" -- Spanish Pascua, Italian Pasqua. Easter is specifically an Old English word and probably means "dawn."
The English word "Easter" originates from Old English Eastre or Eostre, likely derived from a Proto-Germanic root for "dawn" (austron-) or a springtime goddess associated with the east. This name is traditionally linked to the rising sun, symbolizing the resurrection, and was adopted to replace earlier Pascha celebrations.
Last week I posted a short video of a bear waking up from hibernation with Stage IV bedhead. There's more to the story. That was an elderly circus bear callously discarded by the people he used to make money for. He's now been rescued and given his own paddock to walk around in.
Podcast: CBD and Sefton talk birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment and SCOTUS, no boots in Iran, Artemis II and refocusing NASA, the NBA's hatred of everything non-woke, and more!
In more marketing for Project Hail Mary, scientists say they've found the biosigns indicating life growing on an alien planet. It's not proof, just signatures of chemicals that are produced by biological metabolism, and it could be nothing, but scientists think it's a strong sign that this planet is inhabited by something.
In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
Tons of chemicals are detected in the atmospheres of celestial objects every day. But dimethyl sulfide is different, because on Earth, it's only produced by living organisms.
"It is a shock to the system," Nikku Madhusudhan, first author on the paper, told the New York Times. "We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal."
He means they tried to prove the signal was caused by things other than dimethyl sulfide but they could not.
What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet. Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*
Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.
A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV. Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.
A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR? Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR. Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too. LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.
The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring. I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do. But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.
Finish the job, Mr. President! Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]
Podcast: Sefton and CBD talk about how would a peace treaty with Iran work, Democrats defending murderers and rapists, The GOP vs. Dem bench for 2028, composting bodies? And more!
Oh, I forgot to mention this quote from Pete Hegseth, reported by Roger Kimball: "We are sharing the ocean with the Iranian Navy. We're giving them the bottom half."
Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time. The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)
